How long will the partisan attack disguised as a special prosecutor’s investigation continue, with its waste of taxpayer dollars in a feckless, runaway pursuit of the president?
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Excuse me. That was the old question, wasn’t it?
If memory serves, it was the question aimed at Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh by Senate Republican leader Bob Dole and his colleagues.
Shortly before the 1992 election, the Kansan and nearly 30 of his pals in the Senate threatened a filibuster that killed legislation to revive the expiring law providing for independent investigations of executive branch wrongdoing.
At the time, Republican Sen. William Cohen of Maine told his colleagues they would “rue the day” they allowed the law to lapse if Bill Clinton made it to the White House.
Eventually, Dole and company acceded to a revival of the law, which imposed time and cost controls on investigations and limited prosecutors from making accusations of criminality unless indictments were pursued.
Got that? It means they gutted the legislation because they were angry at Walsh, a double-dyed Republican, a former federal judge and deputy attorney general in the Nixon administration who didn’t draw much GOP fire until he made it clear he thought suborning the Constitution and letting nitwits such as Oliver North conduct off-the-books foreign policy adventures were bad ideas.
But now, in a pirouette of hypocrisy astonishing even by congressional standards, Dole and the gang are getting their fondest wish: a special prosecutor for the Whitewater Development land deal in Arkansas, which has entangled Clinton and his wife.
Investigators are trying to determine whether depositors’ funds were diverted from Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan to help retire Clinton’s 1984 campaign debt in Arkansas and whether S&L money was improperly deposited in the Whitewater account.
The Clinton crowd has botched the politics of Whitewater, but Dole’s performance in ginning up the controversy rates a special mention.
The old independent-counsel law expired late in 1992, largely as a result of Republican outrage over Walsh’s Iran-contra investigation, which has run on for seven years and consumed more than $30 million.
Under that law, an independent counsel was to be named by a panel of three federal appellate judges.
To begin the process leading to the appointment of an independent counsel, the law required specific information from a credible source alleging a federal felony violation.
There has been no such allegation in the Whitewater affair, but who cares?
Dole has submitted his list, which includes a pair of Carter administration attorneys general, Griffin Bell and Benjamin Civiletti, and Washington attorney Robert Bennett, who was special counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee and currently labors for Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.).
Filling out Dole’s lineup card were a trio of former U.S. attorneys, including Chicagoans Dan Webb and Anton Valukas.
Feverish over his role in protecting the commonweal, Dole has also called for a select congressional committee to help the special prosecutor examine Whitewater.
Thus far, he has not gone on television to demand that Hillary Rodham Clinton walk on hot coals as a means of proving her innocence in whatever it is she hasn’t been charged with in Whitewater.
These days, throwing out names for special prosecutor is nearly as much fun as cutting book deals with Arkansas state troopers, so the professional class of Clinton haters are inking their rosters.
The Free Congress Foundation, a high-sounding conservative front organization dedicated to a return to Reaganomics and the deportation of Hillary Clinton, suggested Atty. Gen. Janet Reno should appoint a Republican “for the sake of independence.”
Their choice? Richard Thornburgh. In case you’ve forgotten, he’s the one-time Republican governor of Pennsylvania who served as a thoroughly partisan attorney general under President George Bush.
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Three years ago, Thornburgh, who harbored White House ambitions, was upset in a Pennsylvania Senate race in part because James Carville, the fellow who turned out to be Clinton’s top campaign strategist, worked for his rival.
Clearly, a failed and embittered Republican politico is just the sort of independent voice other Republicans feel this investigating process requires. Which begs the question, does Rush Limbaugh have a law degree?